Surprise: June In Baltimore Is Still Pretty Darned Violent

Certain residents of Baltimore wanted a lighter police presence, and got what they wished for. Police are now mostly being reactive, rather than proactive, which had previously helped hold down the violence which had made Baltimore safer than just 3% of American cities, with a violent crime rate almost four times the nation average

(Baltimore Sun) Baltimore police announced the arrests of two men in the death of a 16-year-old girl and the indictments of 11 members of a suspected drug crew they say might be responsible for some of the violence that has roiled the city in recent weeks.

The arrests and indictments come as police face criticism amid a surge of shootings and killings since the arrest of Freddie Gray. The 25-year-old Baltimore man died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in police custody.

“We are in the battle,” police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said Thursday. “You can see we are in the battle, and we’re showing you we are in the battle and we’re taking this very seriously.”

The city recorded 42 homicides in May — the deadliest month in 25 years — and has started June with 14 more.

by Sir John Hawkins

John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.

The two men arrested are serious scumbags, having broken in to the home, sexually assaulting her, then strangling her with an electrical cord. All for a score of $40, a laptop, and an iPad. Then they set her body and the house on fire. You’ll have to read the rest of the article to see how “evil” these guys were, as Police Maj. Stanley Bradford called their motive. The girl knew these two scumbags, and had been hanging out with them. She had even talked to Dixon just a few hours prior.

This is life in Baltimore. Homicides and shootings, along with robberies and auto thefts, are way up in Baltimore post-Freddie Gray funeral, arrests way down. And it doesn’t help that the community is less engaged with police. The dangerous situation to police in these neighborhoods with the high crime has required the Baltimore PD to double up officers, meaning a systematic decrease in police coverage.

Around the nation, communities and police departments are struggling to adapt to an era of heightened scrutiny, when every stop can be recorded on a cellphone. But residents, clergy members and neighborhood leaders say the past six weeks have made another reality clear: that as much as some officers regularly humiliated and infuriated many who live here, angering gang members and solid citizens alike, the solution has to be better policing, not a diminished police presence.

Funny, most articles and preachings fail to mention what their ideas for better policing are. Most tend to be squishy feel good Kumbaya notions that fail to reduce crime. They also fail to mention what they will do to get the people in their neighborhoods to be less criminal.